Investing in Divorce

Just when you think there is nothing new with divorce, something new comes along. I was fascinated with the article in the December 4, 2010 New York Times by Binyamin Applebaum entitled “ Taking Sides in a Divorce, Chasing Profit.” See entire article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/business/05divorce.html
Balance Point Divorce Funding, a new Beverly Hills lender offers to cover the cost of breaking up — paying a lawyer, searching for hidden assets, maintaining a lifestyle — in exchange for a share of the winnings. The article say, “Stacey Napp, a lawyer by training who has spent her career in finance, founded Balance Point last year with money from her own divorce. Since then, she has provided more than $2 million to 10 women seeking divorces. She says she is helping to ensure both sides can defend their interests.” Personally, I believe that if the parties looked at the bottom line, they would each get a lot more money if they mediated. As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com WM (197) 12/7/10

Divorce and Fairness

In a mediation couples usually feel that the standard of resolving a dispute is usually “fairness.” Unfortunately, like beauty fairness is in the eyes of the beholder. The standard that I prefer as a mediator is “acceptable.” Contemplation of “fairness” has lead me to determine what is the popular view of “fairness.” Wikipedia gives a good overview of “fair division” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_division. It says in part: “Fair division, also known as the cake cutting problem, is the problem of dividing a resource in such a way that all recipients believe that they have received a fair amount. The problem is easier when recipients have different measures of value of the parts of the resource: in the "cake cutting" version, one recipient may like marzipan, another prefers cherries, and so on—then, and only then, the n recipients may get even more than what would be one n-th of the value of the "cake" for each of them. On the other hand, the presence of different measures opens a vast potential for many challenging questions and directions of further research. There are a number of variants of the problem. The definition of 'fair' may simply mean that they get at least their fair proportion, or harder requirements like envy-freeness may also need to be satisfied. The theoretical algorithms mainly deal with goods that can be divided without losing value. The division of indivisible goods, as in for instance a divorce, is a major practical problem. Chore division is a variant where the goods are undesirable. Fair division is often used to refer to just the simplest variant. That version is referred to here as proportional division or simple fair division.” I wonder if the “cake cutting problem” actually begins at the wedding. More about the "cake cutdtting problem" as a tool in medidation in my March 21, 2008 blog on Divorce Proverbs and Aphorisms at
http://centerfordivorcemediation.blogspot.com/2008/03/divorce-proverbs-and-aphorisms.html. As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com WM (196) 12/1/10

Divorce and Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving Dinner this month, I thought about the divorce issues that the holiday highlights. When we mediate parenting issues we usually allocate holidays. Very often the parents alternate holiday years. For example, the Mother may have Thanksgiving with her children in even years and the Father in odd years. But there is still the issue of whether Thanksgiving is a one day or four day holiday. If it is only one day, one parent may celebrate on Friday. There are many other issues including transportation, new significant others, and of course the menu! These issues don’t go away when there are adult children. On occasion parents decide to still celebrate together. The possibility of family dinners after divorce was recently discussed by Laurie David in an article in the new divorce feature in the Huffington Post. See the entire article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david/my-family-dinner-after-di_b_779277.html If this does not work for Thanksgiving there is always Christmas and Chanukah. As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com WM (195) 11/24/10

Passing a Baton in Divorce and Mediation

Not sure I can easily explain this but I have always been fascinated how people pass an object or a baton to someone else and usually know when the other person has it and when it can be released without the object or baton falling. I can’t explain how people know they have the object or baton but it seems to be instinctive. There may be a subtle difference in the feel of the object or baton or one of the human senses. I googled and found the following from Brainz in response to the question, “How many human senses?

“We are taught in school that the body has five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. However, experts now believe that there are quite a lot more—and the total number depends on the expert you are talking to and the definition they give to the word “sense.”
Some say that there are nine senses. Aside from the basic five, they include thermoception, nociception, equilibrioception, and proprioception. They also include the feeling of hunger and thirst. For them, a sense must be linked to particular sense organ that registers and interprets a stimuli. Hunger and thirst are also sometimes included. They do not include any interpretations made primarily by the brain. That is why they don’t think of intuition as a sense (even though many people call it the “sixth sense.” For them, intuition does not just perceive data from real experience, but makes a quick judgment based on data gathered by several sensory organs.” http://brainz.org/how-many-human-senses-are-there/

I am not sure which human senses are involved in passing an object or if it is something else. But what has this to do with my usual topic of divorce and mediation? My take is that in divorce and mediation that there are things going on which we don’t understand or are not aware of but effect the results. The parties ultimately also want a “clean handoff.” As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com/ WM (194) 11/7/10

Divorce and Home Inspections

Occasionally I come across a new and useful divorce tip. An October 27, 2010 blog by Jennifer Saranow Schultz in the New York Times was very good. See it at http://nyti.ms/cdm1031 It suggests a home inspection before a couple gets divorced and before an appraisal. I have found that couples very often know that certain repairs need to be made but there could be repairs that they are not aware of. This could especially be a problem if as usually the case, retains 100% ownership of the house. Divorcing couples don’t like to spend more money but this could save them a lot in the long run. This is probably a good idea with other assets such as cars. I have a colleague, who suggests that each party also gets a physical before divorcing. As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com/ WM(193) 10/31/10

Most Expensive Divorces

I always thought high profile litigated divorces settlements were high but did not know how high. Finally, I thought to Google and found a Wikipedia page on Most Expensive Divorces. It listed the following listed below at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_divorces. They are not adjusted for inflation and I am not sure if they include attorney’s fees. Needless to say when I Googled “Most Expensive Mediations” the closest I got was “Most Expensive Medications.” By the way, Alexion Pharmaceutical's Soliris, at $409,500 a year, is the world's single most expensive drug!
• Rupert Murdoch's divorce from Anna Murdoch; reputedly "the most expensive divorce in history" at $1.7 billion
• Adnan Khashoggi's divorce from Soraya Khashoggi; estimated at $874 million
• Craig McCaw's divorce from Wendy McCaw; estimated to exceed $460 million
• Michael Jordan's divorce from Juanita Jordan; estimated to exceed $150 million and was considered by Forbes Magazine to be "the most expensive celebrity divorce" in history, as of April 2007
• Charles Edgar Fipke $200 million
• Neil Diamond's divorce from Marcia Murphey; estimated at $150 million
• Harrison Ford's divorce from Melissa Mathison; estimated at $118 million
• Greg Norman's divorce from Laura Andrassy; estimated at $103 million
• Tiger Woods' divorce from Elin Nordegren; estimated at $100 million
• Steven Spielberg's divorce from Amy Irving; estimated at $100 million
• Madonna's divorce from Guy Ritchie; estimated at $90 million
• Kevin Costner's divorce from Cindy Silva; estimated at $80 million
• Kenny Rogers divorce from Marianne Rogers; estimated at $60 million
• James Cameron's divorce from Linda Hamilton; estimated to exceed $50 million
• Paul McCartney's divorce from Heather Mills; estimated at $48.6 million
• Michael Douglas' divorce from Diandra Douglas; estimated at $45 million
• Ted Danson's divorce from Casey Coats; estimated at $30 million
• Donald Trump's divorce from Ivana Trump; estimated at $25 million
• Lionel Richie's divorce from Diane Richie; estimated at $20 million
• Mick Jagger's divorce from Jerry Hall; estimated between $15 and $25 million

As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com/ WM(192) 10/8/10

Non-Divorce or Un-Divorce Update

I blogged about this topic on March 8, 2009 in a blog called “Non-Divorce Divorce or Separating without Divorcing.” See blog at http://centerfordivorcemediation.blogspot.com/search?q=non-divorce. Pamela Paul wrote an article in the July 30, 2010 New York Times entitled “The Un-Divorced” See entire article at

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/fashion/01Undivorced.html. She makes many of the same points I did. Couples should weigh the pros and cons of this option.

As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com/ WM(191) 9/25/10